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My bookmarks are gone! I tried everything in the Help pages, and they're STILL gone! How can I retrieve my Bookmarks, which I DEPEND on for business?

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  • Last reply by BelFox

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When I go to Bookmarks --> Show All Bookmarks --> Import and Backup --> Restore:

There is only ONE backup, for today's date! There are supposed to be the last 15 backups!

Firefox just updated TODAY on my laptop to "The New Firefox" (version 57.0), so it doesn't seem to be making available any backups from the previous version of Firefox. Please tell me that backups from the previous version are available! I NEED my bookmarks back! If I can't get them back, then that's an egregious design flaw and I will never use Firefox again. This new version has already shattered my faith in this product, as losing a user's bookmarks is as bad as a user getting their hard drive stripped - WORST case scenario for a computer product - WORST.

I'm still hoping there is a solution to this.

When I go to Bookmarks --> Show All Bookmarks --> Import and Backup --> Restore: There is only ONE backup, for today's date! There are supposed to be the last 15 backups! Firefox just updated TODAY on my laptop to "The New Firefox" (version 57.0), so it doesn't seem to be making available any backups from the previous version of Firefox. Please tell me that backups from the previous version are available! I NEED my bookmarks back! If I can't get them back, then that's an egregious design flaw and I will never use Firefox again. This new version has already shattered my faith in this product, as losing a user's bookmarks is as bad as a user getting their hard drive stripped - WORST case scenario for a computer product - WORST. I'm still hoping there is a solution to this.

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I definitely need further assistance. I have just tried all of the links above; I still have the problem.

The problem seems to be that in the "bookmarkbackups" folder, there is only one JSON file - for today - for AFTER the version 57 update. I need backups from before that. The profile link above is mis-titled - that passage only tells how to take current stuff and copy to a new profile; not how to get stuff from an old profile - for example, from a profile from before this version 57 update.

I don't perform my own backups; I have expected Firefox to be a robust program with its own backups. But after this update (which I did not initiate), the new Firefox is not giving me access to the hundreds of bookmarks that I had before today. Is this a bug in version 57?

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Further development - hopefully good:

I came across this post on 5/3/17, 6:11 PM by jscher2000: Towards the end of the post, he says: "In the Windows Explorer address bar, click the capitalized word Profiles to move up one level in the folder hierarchy. More than one folder here by any chance? Do the files in those folders look like they were last updated around the time of the crash?"

In my post directly above, I say: "The problem seems to be that in the "bookmarkbackups" folder, there is only one JSON file - for today - for AFTER the version 57 update."

Using the info. from jscher2000's post in the quote above, I did see 2 other folders UNDER the "Profiles" folder. Another one of these folders has a "bookmarkbackups" folder, and there are 15 bookmark backups in there.

This looks promising - the most recent backup IS on 11/17/17, probably from BEFORE the version 57 update (my computer was slowed to being nearly out of commission on 11/17 and 11/18; I don't know if that might have been caused by this automated Firefox update).

Now the question is, I can SEE this 11/17/17 backup in Windows Explorer; how do I RESTORE it in Firefox? As I originally mentioned, it doesn't show up when I click through: Bookmarks --> Show All Bookmarks --> Import and Backup --> Restore. ONLY the ONE backup from 11/18/17 shows up when I do that. Is there a way to get this other backup into that side menu, so that I can click on it to do whatever is done next to restore it?

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Hi someday-is-now,

What I suggest you do is this:

1. Make a copy of all the files you find in any "bookmarkbackups" folder you find in Firefox Profile folders on your PC. From your previous posts I conclude there should be at least 16 files to be copied. Put them in a safe location as a backup, just to be sure.

2. Write down the path of the folder in which you found the most recent backup (the one from 11/17/17 you want to restore).

3. Follow the steps in "Restoring from backups" (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them#w_restoring-from-backups). In step 3, click on "Choose File..." (in the side menu).

4. Navigate to the path you wrote down in the second step. Select the file you want to restore.

This should restore the backup and the bookmarks you had before the update.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you need more help.

Best regards, BelFox